In Memoriam: Gloria Steinem, 1934-2026
Our 10 a.m. “Updates and Pitches” meeting is usually a chatty, vibrant affair — a team of all-female editors trading story ideas and sounding off on the day’s headlines. This morning was different. As news broke that Gloria Steinem had died at 92, a pall settled over the room. It was a sad morning for women everywhere.
We could fill this page with her highlights alone, and they’re worth remembering. In 1963, she went undercover as a Playboy Bunny for an exposé that became one of the earliest examples of journalism confronting workplace exploitation head-on. In 1969, at nearly 35, she covered a “speak-out” where women spoke publicly for the first time about their illegal abortions — the moment she later called her feminist awakening. Two years later, she co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus alongside Betty Friedan, Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug, building the political infrastructure that turned a movement into lasting power. That same December, the preview issue of Ms. Magazine ran inside New York Magazine; by January 1972, the first standalone issue sold out all 300,000 copies in eight days — proof there was a starving audience for women’s stories told by women. In 2013, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And well into her 90s, she was still speaking out, including against the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade, insisting that without control over our own bodies, there is no democracy.
But for our scrappy team of five writers and editors, it hits deeper than the highlight reel. Each of us gets to do the work we love because of Gloria. Our mission at Flow Space is to cover the underreported, under-researched and historically underfunded corners of women’s health — to give voice to women who’ve been ignored and marginalized for far too long. When we pick up the phone or fire off an email to report a story, it’s only possible because of the newsroom legacy she built when Ms. Magazine first hit newsstands.
She walked a path less traveled and left a road behind her for us. Our stories on midlife pregnancy, birth control, heart health, gray divorce, estrogen patch shortages and the women’s health legislation moving through Congress — all of it is proof of that road.
She extended her activism through community and across generations, something we live out tangibly here. Our team spans ages 30 to 55 — different walks of life, different dreams, one shared purpose: amplifying the voices of women.
She never gatekept her knowledge. She never hid her love. She spoke openly about the importance of friendship, the right to full and focused healthcare and the freedom to live the life you actually want.
That’s exactly why she matters to us — and why her death is a reminder of the work still ahead. We’ll continue it in her memory.
RIP Gloria, and thank you.
Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That’s their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood.” — Gloria Steinem, New York Magazine, 1971
